Sen. Obama swamped Sen. John McCain in a mock election among students from kindergarten through college age, with the Republican presidential ticket winning only four states.

In the state-by-state tallies, McCain won the student mock vote in only Hawaii, Montana, West Virginia and Wyoming. (Yes, it's true: McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin lost the mock vote in her home state of Alaska, while Obama lost his home state, Hawaii.)

Translating those results into the Electoral College map, the student vote would give Obama 523 electoral votes, and only 15 for McCain.

In the actual electoral tally, the final electoral score was 365 to 173. McCain won 22 states.

The students have been successful in calling the winners in at least the last four elections: Bill Clinton in 1996, George Bush in 2000 and 2004, and Barack Obama in 2008.

The Democratic ticket of Sens. Obama and Joe Biden had 67.6 percent of the vote, with 29.3 percent for Republicans McCain and Palin. Independent Ralph Nader was third with 1.2 percent.

A smaller mock election from Weekly Reader magazine, declared Obama the winner, with 54.7 percent to McCain's 42.9 percent. Obama won 33 states and D.C., for a 420-118 victory in the mock Electoral College. The Weekly Reader election included more than 125,000 votes from kindergarten through 12th grade. It claims to have forecast the winner in 12 out of the past 13 elections (missing out in 1992, when students chose George H.W. Bush over Bill Clinton).

The National Student/Parent Mock Election is a voter-education project supported by many educational associations and Google, the National Association of Broadcasters Educational Foundation, the textbook publisher Pearson, USA Today, Declare Yourself, Strong American Schools, and the education research firm School Perceptions.

The nonprofit, nonpartisan group says its goal is to "to turn the sense of powerlessness that keeps young Americans and their parents, too, from going to the polls into a sense of the power of participation in our democracy."